Why The Caged Bird Sings
by Tristis Lullum
Summary: Nothing is free. [Post Goodbye and Good Luck]


**Disclaimer:** I don't own CSI.

**Other:** A post Goodbye and Good luck fic from Grissom's POV. This is a one shot, I am NOT writing more, so don't ask. I can't stand GSR. I just felt sorry for poor Grissom, and wanted to show an emotional side of him to some extent.

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**Why the Caged Bird Sings**

Nothing was free.

He was beginning to learn the severity of the words as he stood in his office, his eyes directed towards the letter that he was holding ever so tightly in his hands, yet wasn't actually reading. He stood, dumbfounded as his eyes scanned over the lettering, that familiar hand writing that he had come to know so well over the years was now coming back to bite him, as it was now laying out the words he had started to fear. Ever since she had taken that case, he had begun to dread, and he hadn't known why. This just proved his fears correct. His lungs became tight in his chest, taking their toll for the oxygen he had to breathe to keep him alive. His heart twisted and constricted upon itself in a way that couldn't have been healthy, taking its toll for the love that had just brutally been ripped from every fiber of his being. No, nothing in this world was free, and he was starting to pay the price for everything he had taken for granted.

His eyes traced over that familiar lettering again and again, reading and rereading the letter. One time turned into twice, then another, and another, as his eyes wouldn't stop committing the words to memory, as if they were important scripture. He stumbled awkwardly to his desk, absently pulling his chair out as he allowed his weak knees to finally give.

He placed the letter on his desk quickly, moving his numbing fingers as if the paper itself was some sort of poison, and touching it for any duration of time would surely, in turn, poison him. It floated effortlessly before landing neatly on his desk amongst the neatly stacked paperwork and assortment of junk. Yes, junk, as the items had suddenly lost whatever value they had ever held to him. Like an aging pearl that was beginning to lose both its luster and its worth, they no longer held the shine that they used to. They were no longer interesting, no longer worth solving, or putting any time into. In fact, nothing seemed worthwhile anymore, and it had only taken a few short seconds for her to rip everything he held dear away from him. Thoughts raced through his mind; did she know she was leaving? Was she planning it? And, most importantly, why couldn't she talk to him about it? The weight of the situation was fluttering precariously over his head, and had yet to land fully on his shoulders. It was toying with the idea, yes, but until it fully landed, his mind had labeled the situation too surreal to actually have anything truthful within it. This was all a dream, he told himself – no matter how naïve and childish it sounded, it was just a dream. In fact, he was certain that if he brought his hand over to pinch the back of his other one, he'd find himself waking up, in his bed, with chills from a simple nightmare. And she'd still be there, lying next to him, sleeping. Perfectly serene and oblivious to whatever fears he had just experienced.

And yet, whenever his fingers loomed over his hand, they shied away, weary of the fact that something terrible might happen should he pinch his hand and not wake up.

The words in her letter resonated through his mind, like ripples in the water. They started out small, but with thought they grew, until they were large arcs that were so wide his head began to throb painfully. If this wasn't a dream, then surely it must be a sick joke. His eyes shuffled clumsily up to the wall, where a calendar was perched. No, it wasn't April, nor was it the first, but it seemed that any moment she would walk up to his door and lean in the archway, smiling the way she always did. And yet as his eyes moved toward the frame, all that occupied it was the door itself, and nothing more. He stared at it for a moment, not really comprehending that that was the door that she had walked through, so many times, and that she would traverse it no more.

The first thing he felt through his numb, surreal stupor was the sharp, jagged edge of pain. She could have spoken with him; she could have told him what was on her mind. What did somewhere else have that Vegas didn't? _He_ was in Vegas; after all, shouldn't that be all she needed? Obviously it was not, and no matter how instinct told him that he should be angry, he was not. No, he didn't have enough emotion to be angry with her.

He had been apathetic, caring, but otherwise apathetic to whatever situation was at hand. She was the only one whom he had shown love for, or caring on anything higher than a business or pseudo-friendship level. All the words she had said to him, about not caring, about not showing emotion ran through his mind so quickly they were a blur, and yet he had still had time to both process and extract pain from them at once. The love that had once filled him whenever he thought of her name, or saw her face was gone; it had abruptly packed its bags and left, not unlike the way she, herself, had. Whenever he thought of her name now, all he felt was the hollowness of his own insides, and the squirming pain of the organ that was beating in his chest. It was just an organ; after all, it couldn't feel anything but pain and stress. No, love was just a mere illusion, and in his chest the magic show was over.

He was always careful to distance himself emotionally from his cases, to place that veil, that plaster mask over his features, and not allow whatever feelings that were brewing, deep, deep inside, to show through that guard. His mask was like his defense, it shielded the outside world from what he was thinking, and in turn shielded him from the outside world. But she had been the one exception to his strict rules, and now it was coming back to take its toll as well; nothing was free, after all. And this slip up had to come with a hefty bill.

His mind began to wander, to back track the last couple of days, back to when she had mentioned she wanted to work on the case. He should have intervened; he should have refused her need to take the case. If he had, she could – would, he corrected – still be here, with him.

The second thing he felt through his stupor was the overwhelming sense of loss. The one thing he had ever loved, the only woman he had ever allowed to really know him, had left. Upped and gone, caught the next plane out of Vegas, likely, and left him alone. Sure he had his friends, his coworkers, the lab, but it wasn't like having _her_. And it hurt. They didn't rub his shoulders at night and let him talk about how particularly ludicrous Ecklie had been that day, or how much paperwork he had managed to fork out. She, his lifeline, was gone, and in turn so was whatever life he had worth living.

His dumbstruck, defenseless mind began to reel as it pulled up memories, completely out of the blue. A phrase struck his mind; the one with the singing caged bird, representing how out of everything bad, something good is also born.

But this was not true, he realized quickly. There was nothing good out of being caged, nor was there anything good with having the love of your life suddenly leave, without even leaving a number to contact, or even a letter of resignation (with a bleak flicker of some sick, twisted humor, his eyes flickered down to the letter on his desk). There was nothing good about it at all.

However, in that moment he realized that the caged bird really does sing, except the context of the word sing was simply over-looked.

The bird was not singing a song of joy, it was singing a dirge.

A dirge for all of the happiness it now had to bury.


End file.
